“What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don't they come from your desires that battle within you? You want something but don't get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight.” –James 4:1-2a
When I look back at all of the disagreements and arguments that I have had with people in the past, there is one common thread: selfishness. Either I was too proud to admit I was wrong, too self-centered to see things from their perspective, or too impatient to listen to what they actually had to say. Granted, the other party isn’t always innocent either, but that’s beside the point. When I’m selfish, it affects my relationships with others—and of course, with God too.
James tells us that our desires ‘battle within us.’ This word for desires is where we get our word ‘hedonism’ from. Hedonism is the quest for happiness at any expense. It is a form of selfishness that only cares about meeting one’s desires. It doesn’t think about other people. We don’t need to do a lot of discussion about these desires that battle within us. We all experience them everyday. We struggle with killing off the old self. And it doesn’t only affect us.
So here’s the skinny: how are your selfish desires affecting your relationships with others? It is a simple, but painful evaluation. So, today simply take some time to think about how your selfishness affects others. Start to take steps to determine how you can get your desires out of the way. Remember, this whole section focuses around verse 6. Don’t forget the grace!
Sunday, July 6, 2008
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
C. S. Lewis complements the thought about desires: "If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and to earnestly hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I suggest that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith. Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling around with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased" (The Weight of Glory). It is not so much that we must get our desires out of the way as it is that we must strengthen our desires and quite being "far too easily pleased."
One thing, I seem to find extremely important is that this word used for desire here is one of an often bad kind of desire, a passion or lust, that is something that is not good.
On looking up one of the other words for desire, I found it can mean a similar idea of passion or lust or even coveting. However, that word is used of Jesus when he says he had desired to eat the Passover with his disciples in Luke.
It seems to me then, that while some words for desire can lean themselves to a certain bent, either good or bad, the word desire itself is neither good nor evil, but can be used to good or evil bents.
It fascinates me, the number of things that are either neutral or good in their intended purposes and yet we and the evil forces of this world, often pervert and corrupt them, as Lewis said in The Problem of Pain.
I definitely agree that one of the areas of our lives that are most affected by the fall would have to be our desires. Our desires are so controlling, that if we don't constantly mold and shape them, we will quickly find ourselves in trouble.
One of the ancients described our desires as twofold- there's the moat around the castle and then the inner chambers of the castle. Most of us fall in the moat before we ever get into the castle, but if we can only cross the moat, then we can finally experience the purity of our desires.
Post a Comment